The Emotional Baggage That Comes When Running From Narcissists

It’s heavily on my mind tonight, toxic relationships and all the emotional baggage that goes along with making the conscious choice to do better for yourself and your family. I’m only newly exploring life through this lens of healing and grief on the other side of making a huge, life-altering choice. Through this process I’m realizing some things that I seem to need to keep continually reminding myself.

Positive affirmations for myself that maybe will help offer clarity for others that are struggling with this too. There are so many of us. I’m realizing this as I have more personal and candid conversations with people about what we’ve been dealing with in our personal lives. It amazes me that even within my small pool of friendships that it appears to be a chronic problem – people suffering at the hands of narcissists.

People they love. People they feel intricately linked and indebted to – obligated in continuing their relationships. And it’s hard, y’all. So hard. Doesn’t it feel easier to just keep taking it, whatever that means in any given situation, because to stand up for yourself is so damn hard and it opens up a host of all new problems??

I hope that a few years from now, when I’m further away from my current situation, that I might be a fountain of inspiration and positivity for those trying to get out of unpleasant circumstances, but for now… I waffle daily. I feel the hardness of it all. I wonder if it was worth it to stand up for myself and my family. Should I have just kept taking it? Should I cave now and continue forward within our destructive cycle? Would that be easier?

So these are the things I feel like I NEED to keep telling myself…

This isn’t your fault. Well, it’s 100% my fault that I have completely removed the toxic relationships poisoning my life. But I mean this in the greater sense of the fact that I didn’t/don’t deserve everything that is happening to me just because I stopped playing by the rules that were established by the people trying to control my life.

There is NOTHING wrong with standing up for yourself and making healthy choices. Even when society/friends/family don’t understand them. They don’t understand them because they’ve never been put in a position to even have to consider the possibility of the reality that you’re living.

Things WILL get better. This is something I’m taking on good faith from talking with people that have been here and done that. Because I’m not at all to the point that I feel better. Things will be/are REALLY REALLY hard, but I try to keep it in perspective that I’m setting an example for my children now that they should never tolerate someone treating them horribly just because they’ve been made to feel like they are required to in the name of family or love or whatever other bullshit gets thrown at them. If I should grow up to be a manipulative, toxic person that is causing my children anxiety & pain – I don’t want them to even hesitate in kicking my ass to the curb.

You are not responsible for the feelings of the person/people that have been mistreating you. Narcissists are chronic gaslighters and they will not waver in their attempts to ignite guilt in you for making the choice to defend/protect yourself or your family. They will continually shift blame and they don’t actually have the capacity to be introspective and acknowledge that they’ve done anything that would have contributed to you nipping this cycle in the bud.

I’ve been fairly quiet about what’s been happening in public forums, and only our closest friends and family know what’s happened. I’ve made excuse, after excuse, to myself about WHY it’s been necessary. I don’t want to seem petty. I don’t want to make things worse. I don’t want to ruin people’s reputations. I don’t want, I don’t want, I don’t want… There’s so much fear here. If I stand up stronger, then what will the blow back be? How will I suffer?

I really haven’t wanted – any of this shit. And yet it’s still following me. It doesn’t end. And in the midst of all my excuses I somehow lost the fact that what I’ve really been doing is protecting and enabling these people. People that are doing bad things, and in doing that I’m allowing them to control the narrative of my story.